Since its inception, Longlati has adhered to a tripartite conceptual framework, systematically transitioning from its foundational commitment to “fulfilling promises” toward the Re-Asia Project, predicated on the epistemological reconstitution of cultural narratives and methodological pluralism.
Through its five years’ rigorous research and interdisciplinary discourse, Longlati has evolved from an “archival institution” to a producer of critical knowledge. At its core, the institution is committed to fostering critical knowledge, creating a research-driven space centered on artists while incorporating interdisciplinary perspectives. This transformation enables the parallel development of collections and exhibitions. Beyond reevaluating established art historical narratives, the project also serves as an experimental discourse on identity, cultural representation, and materiality. As part of this process, we have reviewed past collaborations with artists and, through a prism-like conceptual framework, explored feminist perspectives, non-Western modernity, and material cultural transmission. These efforts contribute to a contemporary art reinterpretation that is socially attuned, cross-continental, and intersectional across gender and race. As an institution that does not adhere to a Western-centric perspective, Longlati’s practice not only critiques Western art historiography but also fosters a more diversified and interconnected contemporary art landscape through collaborations with a wide range of artists.
Longlati was founded with a core mission: to address the historical marginalization of women artists. The institution has been dedicated to rediscovering and reassessing female artistic contributions, echoing Linda Nochlin’s seminal question, Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? Initially, Longlati systematically collected and researched the works of pioneering female artists from both the East and the West, such as Judy Chicago and Yayoi Kusama. Building on this foundation, we have since shifted our focus to supporting emerging female creators. Our inaugural project, the exhibition Call and Response, featuring Judy Chicago and Stanley Whitney, was inspired by Chicago’s Lugu Lake Project in China’s Yunnan province. Under the theme What if Women Ruled the World?, Judy Chicago invited Chinese female artists to participate in a collaborative project. Curators Lu Jie and Qiu Zhijie suggested realizing the works of twelve artists, displaying all the thirty-some proposals in textual form. Between July 24 and 30, 2002, Judy Chicago, along with the curatorial team of “Long March Project” and a group of participating female artists, underwent a journey from the United States to China, traveling through Kunming, Lijiang, and Lugu Lake. Along the way, they faced various challenges, from physical conditions to cultural differences, ultimately completing the art project ‘Lugu Lake—Judy Chicago in Dialogue with Chinese Female Artists’.) However, in today’s cultural climate, projects of this nature have become increasingly rare, and experimental practices by Chinese women artists are gradually fading from view. Recognizing this, Longlati remains committed to fostering these voices, continuously reflecting on and enhancing our efforts to support them. The dynamic execution of the institution continues to rewrite female art history traditions initiated by Judy Chicago while surpassing the one-dimensional critique made by Linda Nochlin. We no longer use gender as a binary standard, attempting to find a balance between gender equality and creative autonomy. This understanding also influences many later projects. For example, Ma Qiusha’s solo exhibition, The Mirror[-scape] of Your Skin, curated by Yuan Jiawei, presented selected installations from her Wonderland series, commissioned under Longlati’s collection and sponsorship program since 2018, along with other significant works of her career. This project aligns with Longlati’s long-standing engagement with self-identification in female artistic practice. In her personal growth, Ma Qiusha sensitively noticed the gender empowerment and orders hidden in the collective unconscious, and started exploring different forms of the body and emotion, as well as corresponding materiality and relationality. In this context, Ma Qiusha’s ‘Wonderland’ series installations, which she began exploring in 2015, are based on Différance, a concept that suggests the inexpressibility of language and the cultural context in which the artist exists to accurately express the female bodily experience. Combining non-fictional local memories and imaginations, along with a holistic situational projection, the works showcase the tensions and reconciliation of female temperament and consciousness under specific historical conditions, as well as the co-existence and differentiation of female desire and female discourse. Specifically, in the process of contemplating the skin of ‘Herself’ and ‘the Other,’ the artist intervenes in the long stockings that cover the legs, establishing a mirror rhetoric through their intervallic treatment: broken cement slabs are enveloped by them and reassembled into a complete surface landscape; the irreparable cracks meander, delaying the fulfillment and realization of the male gaze and desire. Such explorations can be traced back to Barbara Kruger’s Your body is a battleground (1989), which deconstructs gender power structures through visual violence. This critical dimension is continued in the works of Christina Quarles, which were acquired by the institution in recent years. In Quarles’ paintings, the tumultuous twisting bodies not only rage against the binary opposition of gender but also offer a new interpretation of the materiality of painting. The figures in her paintings also reinterpret skin tones in scientific terms, transforming racial identity into optical phenomena. Through layers of acrylic paint, hidden hues are revealed, exposing the violent differentiation mechanism by which humans, through the spectrum of light, visually distinguish race.
Re-examining non-Western modernities, South American artist Adriana Varejão’s work, for instance, transforms colonial-era porcelain cracks into metaphors for cultural trauma and material histories of violence. This forms a material chronicle of colonial violence: the cracks in the porcelain glaze, resembling grapevine blue-and-white patterns, evoke a physiological association with flesh and blood, creating a cognitive tremor. This material narrative resonates with Arjun Appadurai’s theory of the social life of things. Similarly, Indonesian-born cultural practitioner Christine Ay Tjoe uses intertwined Buddhist imagery and Christian symbols to signify the unity of the two. Her works attempt to create a new narrative syntax within the material culture that transcends religion. It is both an engagement with Javanese batik craftsmanship and a demystification of the linear historical perspective of colonial modernity. Thus, the narrative techniques employed by Iranian artist Tala Madani produce a toxic body politics through the method of depiction: cartoonish male bodies subvert the politics of excretion in humor, challenging neoliberal ideals of freedom and diversity. In the collective incontinence of men, several cartoon males stand before golden urinals, mischievously urinating across the floor. This serves as both a parody of the masculinist centralism that shapes the phallic figure and regulates the penis, and a commentary on the life violence of bodily control within the process of Middle Eastern modernity, with Iran as its focal point. This consistent critique is mirrored in the demystifying strategy of the artist, paired with Shirin Neshat’s Raging (1999): the fury in the eyes of the armed Persian woman is not only a reversal of the Oriental gaze, but also a diagnostic of the pathological transformation of Islamic modernity. The multifaceted critique of such narrative strategies showcases a comprehensive wisdom: How does Sarah Sze achieve this expression? Her intricately arranged linear installations bring together both the global logistics culture and a digital material history into one. The quality of the new cultural historical view lies in its search for how to piece together an understanding of history—how to integrate the superstructure with the base structure, while reducing the difficulty of understanding when faced with the overwhelming bulk of historical documents. It inquires into how it smoothes out the allure generated by the intersection of history and reality through a materialist lens. By juxtaposing sexuality with the Zen view of time, this is both a visual interpretation of non-Western modernity and an unfolding of gendered critique of materiality. Through the inclusion of these artists, the institution ultimately constructs a ‘postcolonial knowledge production space’ that rejects cultural essentialism.
In terms of the material culture turn, the exhibition Entangled, Ensnared, Entwined creates a dialogue between Carol Bove’s steel sculptures and Alicja Kwade’s use of natural and metal materials—while the former transforms industrial materials into meditative installations, the latter reconfigures the essence of materials to twist the dimensions of time and space. Together, they respond to Arjun Appadurai’s discourse on the fluidity of objects. The exhibition also features Chinese artist Hu Xiaoyuan, who naturally embodies an eastern, subtle form of speculative thinking. Through her practice of deconstructing gender materiality with silk thread, she creates a dialogue across different temporal and cultural contexts. The silk installation uses physiological materials to perform disciplinary techniques—the silk threads passing through steel frames and wood to form a transparent skin, which demonstrates Judith Butler’s material interpretation of the ‘Gender Matrix’ and Gayatri Spivak’s paradox of Can the Subaltern Speak? (The subaltern cannot speak). Similarly, the neon abstract paintings of Mary Weatherford and the neon text installations of Tracey Emin in the institution’s collection form a material dialogue, shifting female emotions from the private sphere to the political expression of the public space. Rosemarie Trockel’s knitted paintings transform traditional female handicrafts into conceptual installations, where the wool’s warp and weft lines parody modernist grids while rewriting the gender history of abstract art with fabric memory. This strategy of subverting material gender codes is contemporarily reinterpreted in Tschabalala Self’s fabric collages—where the African female body, through fabric folds, is reconstructed into a space of resistance. Tschabalala Self’s solo exhibition will also be presented at Longlati on March 19, 2025.
Longlati promises in action to build a critical platform that is neither purely an exhibition machine nor an applied theoretical space, but transforms material practice into a theoretical production device. Positioned in the East, what we see is not only the collision of globalism with Zen time but also the demonstration—how the art space, as a ‘post-colonial knowledge accelerator,’ can turn inter-institutional tools into devices of mediation and difference: the tremor of steel frames, the memory of fabric, and the cracks in porcelain—all work together to produce a transcendental epistemology that overcomes cultural essentialism.
Longlati’s balance between cultural closed loop and open-access framework: Longlati’s “closed-loop ecosystem” essentially acts as an immune system resisting cultural co-optation.
In the first five years, Longlati’s institutional methodology has evolved from a closed-loop model: “Collection – Residency – Exhibition – Writing,” escaping the fate of “non-Western examples” being reduced to curiosity in the biennial system. Approaching Okwui Enwezor’s ideal of a ‘post-colonial institution,’ but with the risk of self-referentiality—when academic discourse becomes overly insular, it degenerates into an elitist intellectual game.
The Open-source Shift of Re-Asia Project: Introducing multidisciplinary scholars, with each collaborating institution becoming a regional narrative node.
Through smart contracts for sharing data and curatorial rights, Longlati avoids cultural hegemony in traditional international art exchanges.
Re-Asia Project Methodological Breakthrough: Fictional Archeology and Infrastructure Politics
In contrast to the dependency on cultural essentialism in traditional regional art projects, the ReAsia Project reconstructs Asian narratives through two radical methods: artists’ curatorial “fictional interventions” (such as Pu Yingwei’s “Pseudo Logbook”) is not merely a curatorial text but a critical fabulation paying homage to Saidiya Hartman’s work on the narrative reconstruction of slavery archives. By fictionalizing the history of the 16th-century Chinese fleet’s arrival in the Caribbean, it exposes the violent logic of ‘discovery-conquest’ in Western maritime history, while subtly hinting at the suppressed historical currents of South-South connections (China—Caribbean). The blurring of the boundaries between creation and curation reverses Hal Foster’s critique of “the curator has become a ‘neoliberal cultural manager’.”
Space Perspective: Space as a Cultural Decoder, Infrastructure as Geopolitical Unconscious
Liang Chen’s “Northeast Asia” geographic framework transforms “culture” research into tangible spatial paths, such as the “Railroad Narrative” explored in Su Yuxin’s solo exhibition Dust that Rides the Wind. This material analysis provides tools for Re-Asia Project to convert “region” into “network,” with Asia no longer just a geographic concept but a fluidity restructured through railways, shipping lines, and digital signals. Liang Chen’s ‘Railroad Narrative’ reveals the overlooked techno-politics: the juxtaposition of Taiwan’s sugar industry railway with the U.S. Pacific Railway not only exposes the material foundations of colonial economics but also hints at how infrastructure serves as the ‘Anson Rabinbach’ in shaping modern subjectivity. The artist uses this to propose a counter-cartography strategy—comparing the ‘decentralized trajectory’ of the sugar railway (connecting plantations and ports rather than cities) with the ‘centralized radial network’ of the Pacific Railway. In doing so, the work deconstructs the spatial violence of the ‘developmentalist’ narrative and offers a de-centered topological model for the reconstruction of Asia.
The Naming War: From “Nanyang” to “Re-Asia”
The very name of “Re-Asia Project” constitutes symbolic guerrilla warfare against colonial knowledge systems—The Colonial Semantic Layering of “Nanyang”. The term “Nanyang” originated in 19th-century European Orientalist discourse (e.g., Élisée Reclus’ description of Southeast Asia as a “botanical garden waiting to be developed”), later appropriated by Chinese immigrant communities post-WWII as a symbol of diasporic identity. However, its geographic boundaries still adhered to Dutch East India Company trade maps. Longlati’s rejection of “Nanyang” represents a self-conscious “word archaeology,” echoing Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s assertion that naming is the first act of the power to rewrite history.
The Dual Semantic Expansion of “Re-Asia”
Return: Refers to the cultural networks of Asia that were fragmented by colonial modernity (e.g., the flow of Buddhism from India through China to Japan being solidified within the framework of nation-states), which suggests that art practice should restore the transregional fluidity that was lost.
Circularity: Rejects the essentialist definition of “Asianness” and replaces the linear view of historical progress with a circular path. In this process of continuous retranslation and misreading, subjectivity is formed.
Text/Longlati
The logo of Re-Asia Project was designed by the artist Gao Lei. The design began with scanning the architectural structure where Longlati sits — the 1930s-built China Industrial Bank warehouse (now Suhe Haus). The core imagery comes from the octagonal cement pillars that exist throughout the building. After deconstruction, the octahedral geometric form was expanded into an installation with multiple meanings: each facet extends a composite gesture that both carries the Tibetan Buddhist iconographic gesture Tarjani Mudra aimed at dispelling ignorance and embraces the popular cultural rebellion gene in heavy metal rock’s “Sign of the Horns.” This juxtaposition of symbols across time and space attempts to depict how the fusion of capital and contemporary art reshapes the cognitive paradigm of Asian cultural studies while dissolving the binary oppositions of East/West, tradition/modernity, and conservative/radical.
The nested cultural codes within the symbol system present a topological structure: the lotus imagery metaphorizes the rebirth and self-awareness of civilization, the mandala pattern refers to the construction of cosmic order, the Bagua symbol corresponds to Eastern divination systems, and the composite imagery of the compass and ship’s wheel hints at the reorientation of culture. When these elements overlap and project onto the cross-section of the octagonal pillar, the grid representing secular geography and the celestial map, which symbolizes the cosmos, work together to construct the cognitive coordinates of “Re-Asia Project”. This schematic not only encompasses cultural territories from Southeast Asia (S) to Northeast Asia (N), but also extends the practice of a decentralized historical narrative strategy through the fusion of an “earth—sky” structure.
The generative mechanism of this symbolic system also resonates with Longlati’s development — “the shift from a closed residency program to a nomadic research-expansion paradigm,” corresponding to the mobility of the ship’s wheel in the symbol. This art practice, based on the methodology of “moving is production,” not only demystifies the centralized historical frameworks but also reconstructs the subjective expression of contemporary Asian art through the embodied spatial experience.
Text/Gao Lei
Project Vision of Initiators
Chen Zihao
Co-founder and Director of Longlati
Since Longlati was founded over five years ago, the institution has pursued its original mission and vision through initiatives like the “90s Artist Program” and curatorial practices centered on female and artists from minority groups. During this process, the institution has engaged in deep collaborations with many artists and scholars who bring academic depth and innovative spirit, including artist Pu Yingwei and architect Liang Chen. Pu Yingwei curated the solo exhibition Silk Road Traveler, Lethe’s Wanderer for Haitian artist Manuel Mathieu, which explored the profound impact of the Age of Exploration on global geopolitics and civilization from a cross-cultural perspective. Later, Pu Yingwei and I engaged in deep theoretical and practical dialogue on the “Nanyang Project,” and with Liang Chen’s participation, we further expanded the temporal and spatial dimensions of the research, extending from “Nanyang” to “East Asian culture,” ultimately forming the “Re-Asia Project”—a cultural research framework with academic potential. The name Longlati is reconstructed from Longitude and Latitude, and longitudinal research is the foundation of the institution. Today, it has evolved from a closed residency program into a more nomadic, research-expanding model, where artists view walking itself as a form of production.
The past five years have not only marked significant milestones in the development of the institution but also laid the critical foundation for its future academic explorations and cultural practices. Through the concept of “fulfillment,” Longlati has verified the effectiveness and sustainability of its narrative logic. The introduction of the “Re-Asia Project” marks the institution’s transformation from a singular, vertical platform to a multi-cultural research agreement. The core challenge ahead will be to avoid simplifying “Re-Asia” into an orientalist cultural tour, and instead construct it as a discourse interface that activates multiple modernities within Asia. Liang Chen’s metaphor of the railroad provides insight into this: when cultural network nodes are sufficiently dense and interconnected, any regional cultural node can become a center of global cultural production. This metaphor not only reveals the spatial possibilities for Longlati and its collaborators’ future development but also provides a theoretical basis and practical path for the reconstruction of Asian cultural subjectivity.
Liang Chen
Architect, Artist
Born in 1987 in Dandong, Liaoning, Liang Chen graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Architecture from Jilin Institute of Architectural Engineering in 2011. From 2011 to 2015, he worked at ZhiXiang Architecture, serving as a director. As a project architect, he completed the Aranya Library (also known as the “L Library”). In 2017, he began his independent architectural and artistic practice and founded Aleph-Liangchen (www.aleph-liangchen.com). Notable architectural works include “The Black Ark” and “Innerflow Gallery.” He has held solo exhibitions at A4 Art Museum and DRC No.12, and curated exhibitions such as “Spatial Discipline” at OCAT Shanghai (2020), “From Antung to Dandong——Rafts, Broken Bridges and Strangers on the Yalu River” at Wind H Art Center in Beijing (2022), “Elges as the Center, Riverine borders, Bridges and Memory Spaces between China, Mongolia, North Korea and Russia” at Nanjing G Museum (2023), and “Endless Annotation” at the Yalu River Art Museum (2023-).
Liang Chen, Aleph No.1, 2022, 2-Channel Video Installation, 80 × 80 × 140 cm. Courtesy to the artist
In the post-pandemic era, the chasms of borders continue to deepen across the globe, taking the form of both tangible walls and invisible lines. They spread like fault lines, cutting through the surface and exposing deeply buried strata—forgotten histories of coexistence, unacknowledged cultural roots, and everyday co-existence buried by political narratives. When cracks become the norm, can art serve as the stitching thread, reweaving the roots of culture? Can space become a container for dialogue, a fertile soil for nurturing coexistence?
With nearly a decade of spatial research on my hometown, the border city of Dandong, as the deep foundation and starting point, I have connected a series of broader boundary definitions and spatial perspectives, including geological fault lines, boundary rivers, coastlines, the Ming Great Wall, the late Qing dynasty’s willow-bordered areas, the Eastern Road, and the Anfeng Railway. Through various exhibitions and research practices over the past few years at the institution, we have sought to discuss a new definition of the relationship between center and periphery. The border is not just a transport endpoint at the relative center of a map but forms a closer, more integrated center with the opposite shore; the border is not just a spectacle like the “end of the world” seen by travelers, but a hybrid, everyday landscape that fosters cultural exchange and integration; the border is not just a geometric line on a map, but an axis from which extends the vast, continuous, and layered border space on both sides. This space should be observed and studied as a whole global border space. Here, with the support of Longlati, we are honored to co-initiate Re-Asia Project and invite everyone to redefine borders from different perspectives, thereby bridging the cracks and reexamining the relationship between Asia and the world.
Pu Yingwei
Artist
Pu Yingwei was born in 1989 and currently lives and works in Beijing. As a representative figure of China’s new generation of conceptual artists, Pu Yingwei has creatively reconstructed the socialist art lineage in a critical manner, aiming to articulate the fluidity of Chinese identity in the context of globalization. Through a cross-cultural narrative framework, he explores the profound impact of China’s modernization development model on the global landscape. Pu’s works span multiple mediums, including painting, video, design, writing, and lectures, and he has pioneered a “new internationalist” art language based on eastern civilization. In recent years, Pu has deepened his global research path, with his artistic footprint covering numerous countries and regions, including Eastern Europe, Africa, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, the Americas, and the Caribbean, as well as conflict-ridden areas such as the Balkans and Ukraine.
Pu Yingwei and Manuel Mathieu, We World, 2023-2024, woodcut, pastel, ink, 20 × 15 cm. Courtesy to the artist
In this transformative era, the world is undergoing a fundamental reorganization of its structure. Amid this ever-changing tide, dissent rises, and new power struggles emerge. As the present demands a new story relevant to this moment, “Re-Asia Project” comes into being. For me, “Re-Asia Project” represents an epistemological re-adventure. It questions the multiple meanings of “Chineseness” in today’s global coordinates — Chinese capital, the international expansion of businesses, national vision, artificial intelligence, and other narratives not yet fully addressed in contemporary art, will converge in this dispute. “Re-Asia Project” is also a reassembly of both personal and institutional practices. Thanks to many years of support from Longlati, I have been entrusted with creating several socially-charged works (these will be presented at the appropriate time). Through curating Haitian artist Manuel Mathieu’s exhibition at the institution, we’ve also tapped into the currents of South-South collaboration. In the past five years, my global travel projects have focused on using the body as a medium for knowledge and expression. These events and the intersection of time and space collectively shape the ideal contours of the artist and the institutions that exist in tandem with them. At this moment, “Re-Asia Project” becomes the brush that outlines these contours: How will artists and art institutions invent their unique relationship with their era? This is both a question and an invitation to walk alongside one another.
Open Call
Re-Asia Project is initiated by Longlati, Liang Chen, and Pu Yingwei, inviting artists and researchers to participate in collaborative efforts. Artists and scholars interested in the Project and related themes are encouraged to apply. Non-selected artists may participate in other ways.
Submission Requirements
1.Artist resume and portfolio of past works.
2. Initial understanding of “Re-Asia Project” and an outline of research directions or articles.
Deadline
Submissions must be received by October 1, 2025. Selected artists will be announced in November.
Proposal Review
Proposals will be reviewed by Longlati, the project initiators, and academic advisors.
Exhibition and Publication Plan
2025: The Project will run throughout 2025 with discussions, exhibitions, publications, and final confirmation of the project roster.
2026-2027: Artists will create and write related to the project in 2026-2027, with exhibitions starting in July 2027 and continuing for a year and a half, ultimately presenting the full scope of the Re-Asia Project.
Project Support
“Re-Asia Project” will cover travel expenses and provide production fees for each participating artist.
Submission Email
Please submit to: reasia@longlatifoundation.org, with the subject line “Re-Asia + [Name]”.
We warmly invite academic institutions, artists, and independent researchers to join this Project, whether through academic support, resource collaboration, or shared space development. Your participation will be a key node in reconnecting the cultural veins of Asia.
